Minutes before the Ahmedabad serial blasts on Saturday evening, an e-mail was sent to the Gujarat police which is now in the possession of the Intelligence Bureau. It read: Stop us if you can.

Intelligence Bureau officials told rediff.com that the e-mail had been sent out by the Indian Mujahideen, a less known outfit which was slowly trying to spread its tentacles in the country.

The Indian Mujahideen e-mail said its intention was to cause panic and fight political outfits which were opposed to Islam. The mail read, 'We the Indian Mujahideen have carried out attacks and will continue to do so. Stop us if you can.'

The Indian Mujahideen first surfaced during the Uttar Pradesh blasts in November 2007. Immediately after those blasts, a mail was sent out by the outfit, claiming responsibility for the blasts. The police, however, dismissed the mail as a prank and continued to look for a Harkat ul Jihad e-Islami/Lashkar-e-Tayiba link to the blasts.

The outfit was again in the news after the Jaipur blasts on May 13 when it claimed it was responsible for those acts of terror.

The IB says the latest e-mail reveals that the Indian Mujahideen was behind Friday's blasts in Bengalaru, and the city police is trying to ascertain the similarities between Friday and Saturday's blasts in Bengalaru and Ahmedabad.

IB officers told rediff.com that in both cases the intention was not to cause casualties, but to create a scare. The mail says the outfit's intention is to fight governments which it feels is anti-Muslim. The Bharatiya Janata Party is in power in both Karnataka and Gujarat,

So who are the Indian Mujahideen?

The IB believes the outfit was floated by youth from Hyderabad, as a faction of the Students Islamic Movement of India.

With the arrest of SIMI's top leaders in Indore, the Indian Mujahideen has been given the responsibility of carrying out terror strikes. Although the outfit is not as professional as SIMI,it is capable of creating chaos, sources said.

Immediately after the UP blasts, the Indian Mujahideen was pushed to the forefront by SIMI and HuJI as the law enforcement agencies's heat on the latter two organisations grew.